New York City's taxis are being annihilated by Uber -- so this startup created an app to help them fight back

Uber is crushing the taxi industry that has dominated New York City for so many years.

Newly available data from the Taxi and Limousine Commission that was analysed by the New York Daily News shows total trips in the first half of 2015 were down 10 per cent to 77 million, compared to same period last year.

The data also shows declining revenues from yellow cab fares — in the first half of 2014, cabbies collected $US1.06 billion; in the same time period this year, that revenue figure fell to $US981 million.

And last week, Gothamist published a story about the increasing number of abandoned taxis piling up on the streets of Brooklyn, outside of taxi dispatchers.

But now, cabbies may have finally figured out a way to fight Uber, Lyft, and a whole slew of on-demand transit apps that have cropped up in recent years.

A new app called Arro wants to connect you with taxis in New York. Arro promises no surge pricing, which may be its selling point against companies like Uber and Lyft, which have “dynamic pricing” models that hike up prices during busy times, infuriating some customers.

In New York City, Uber already has a taxi option nestled in its app, called UberT. But Arro claims it is faster and more efficient than Uber, the ubiquitous $US50 billion car-hailing behemoth.

When you hail a ride with Arro, taxi drivers nearby see your name and location. You see the taxi driver’s name and ID number. Like Lyft and Uber, you input your credit card with Arro before you ride, making it a seamless experience. You pay the metered fare and can include a tip when you make your payment (Lyft already has an in-app tipping option, and UberT does too, though Uber’s other services do not include an option to tip your driver).

“We thought that there was a void in the taxi industry, certainly in New York and in other big cities,” Mike Epley, Arro’s director of product management, told Crain’s New York Thursday. “We see the demand, both on the driver side and on the passenger side. And we want to fill that.”

Arro has been beta-testing with 7,000 taxi cabs. It plans to launch publicly within the next few weeks, with the eventual goal of becoming compatible with NYC’s 20,000 cabs. Eventually, the company plans to expand its services to San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and Washington DC.

“They are in a price war. It’s not that we aren’t growing there, but the profitability of the market and the type of environment [that other taxi-app companies] are setting up — both on the driver and passenger side — ceased to make sense to us.”

Last month, a bill that would cap the number of for-hire vehicles given permits — including the cars of people who drive for Uber and Lyft — was defeated after vocal protests by Uber drivers and its supporters. Instead, the city announced a plan to study the effects of for-hire vehicles such as Uber on congestion in Manhattan.

Stiff competition has also caused the relative value of taxi medallions to plummet. In 2013, a taxi medallion was worth an estimated $US1.3 million. Today, online listings range from $US600,000 to $US900,000.

Medallion owners are in a frenzy to protect their assets. The largest single owner of medallions, Gene Friedman of Taxi Club Limited, recently filed for bankruptcy, telling the Observer that the city was unwilling to work with him as the value of his medallions plummeted.

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